The kathiew, a Cambodian beef noodle soup, is the best-seller at InNenasKitchen, a former underground home restaurant that’s now based out of Aloha Club in Oakland.
Cesar Hernandez/S.F. Chronicle
Chef-owner Nena Naek goes through 200 pounds of beef ribs each week.
Cesar Hernandez/S.F. Chronicle
Nena Naek started InNenasKitchen in March 2024 as a home restaurant in Fruitvale, selling bowls of kathiew, the Cambodian beef noodle soup. Her potent broth, made from beef ribs, neck bones, fish sauce and toasted aromatics, such as star anise, onion and ginger, began drawing hundreds of customers per week. By the end of the following year, she was selling enough bowls each weekend that her landlord asked her to stop.
Naek, an Oakland native who started InNenasKitchen as a side hustle to her medical field day job, initially moved the operation to a warehouse. In March, she landed a residency at Oakland’s Aloha Club, where she now runs InNenasKitchen as a counter service spot. And she is selling more kathiew than ever thanks in part to social media, going from slinging 50 bowls a week to more than 100, churning through 200 pounds of beef ribs and 200 quarts of broth.
Inadvertently, Naek’s landlord helped create the most exciting new Cambodian restaurant in Oakland.
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Over the last few years, Cambodian cuisine has seen incremental growth in the Bay Area, but remains largely underrepresented in the region. Lunette, which arrived in the Ferry Building in 2024, is our highest profile Cambodian restaurant; chef Nite Yun had her own Chef’s Table episode. The short-lived but excellent Kien Svay Cafe in Oakland, which specialized in street food, debuted last year and closed just a few months later.
Oakland retains the highest concentration of Cambodian spots, which include food truck Camchilao, Cambodian Street Food, Phnom Penh and Battambang — one of the Bay Area’s longest running oldest Khmer joints. The menu at InNenasKitchen is more focused by comparison, consisting of just kathiew, rice bowls and egg rolls. Along with Kathiew House in Oakland, InNenasKitchen, caught fire on social media late last year, drawing hundreds of patrons, many of whom were newcomers to the cuisine.
The tight menu at InNenasKitchen spans just kathiew, shrimp rolls and pig ear sausage.
Cesar Hernandez/S.F. Chronicle
InNenasKitchen belongs to Oakland’s tradition of underground home operations that have recently formalized, such as Cenaduria Elvira. The medical day job is still Naek’s main gig, so the restaurant is only open for weekend service at Aloha Club, which has a sizable patio with brick floors, potted plants and communal tables. The clientele is a mix of people who came across the restaurant on social media, loyalists from the home restaurant days and large Cambodian families.
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Most diners still come for bowls of kathiew ($20) liberally garnished with fried garlic, cilantro and slivered onions. Each bowl is impaled by a dino beef rib, which is mostly tender, though you can expect the occasional chewy bit of sinew. Bouncy meat balls, soft carrots and juicy prawns bob in a broth that’s equal parts fragrant and nourishingly rich. You get a choice of egg noodles, wide noodles or thin rice noodles (my recommendation). Trick out your bowl with additional fried garlic and chili oil, which is made by Naek’s mother and has a stinging burn.
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The stellar pig ear sausage place, accompanied by white rice, cucumbers and jeow som, a hot, sour, salty condiment from InNenasKitchen in Oakland.
Cesar Hernandez/S.F. Chronicle
Don’t skip the shrimp rolls ($12) filled with juicy tail-on shrimp, bacon strips and scallions — think bacon-wrapped shrimp, only crunchier. Better still is the crisp-edged pig ear sausage ($16). Made from scratch by a friend of Naek, it’s aromatic with makrut lime leaf, like a Lao sausage, but sweet like an American breakfast one; the inclusion of pig ears give it a one-of-a-kind chew and stickiness. It’s served with cucumber slices, white rice and jeow som, whose recipe calls for fish sauce, sugar, lime and bird’s eye chiles. Sour, salty and seriously hot — I would drink this sauce like a 5-Hour Energy.
A self-described tough critic of Cambodian food, Naek stands out by betting on, in her view, “hard to find” dishes in the region. Her family’s cooking, in other words. For the family-run operation, Naek enlisted the help of her mother, who makes condiments; her fiance, who also cooks; and her niece and daughter, who serve as wait staff.
Family is the ultimate inspiration for InNenasKitchen, Naek said. “I always thought, ‘I need to put my mom and grandmas’ recipes on the map.’”
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InNenasKitchen. Weekends at Aloha Club: 952 Fruitvale Ave., Oakland. Cash, Venmo or Zelle only. instagram.com/innenaskitchen